The Terms of My Surrender
by theUglySpirit
Summary: "Things went downhill with the lightning speed after that letter from Sandy. Soda brought it on himself in his usual way- with the best of intentions." Picks up where the book leaves off. Multiple POVs. Some mature subject matter. Bad language, as always.
1. Chapter 1

SE Hinton owns The Outsiders and the Curtis family.

**The Terms of My Surrender- Prologue**

November 1966-

Things went downhill with the lightning speed after that letter from Sandy. Soda brought it on himself in his usual way- with the best of intentions. He went to see her old man. He didn't say he was going to do it before he did, or I would've cracked him one over that thick head of his.

He didn't tell me afterwards either. I didn't know a thing about it until the cops showed up at the door on a Sunday morning.

I answered the door with a cup of coffee in one hand and the paper still rolled under my arm. I wasn't too keen on being taken away from either of them. When they asked if they could speak to Sodapop Patrick Curtis- his full, damned name, I told them 'no'.

"You can speak to me. I'm his guardian. What seems to be the trouble?"

"We have a warrant for his arrest, Darryl."

"Then you didn't just come here to speak to him, did you? Let's all try to be up-front and honest with one another. What's the warrant for?"

The first cop shuffled his feet. I'd seen him around. He knew us, our side of town. Whatever it was, I don't think he quite believed it about Soda. The second guy was more eager.

He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his inside jacket pocket.

"Your brother has been charged with first degree rape. Get him an attorney, and it sounds like it could get knocked down to seduction under promise of marriage. Either way, though, it's a felony, and kind of a step up from drag racing. We need him to come down to the station house. We'll do our talking there."

I set my coffee down on the window sill. I refused to acknowledge the rape charge:

"Seduction of whom?"

"We can't disclose the victim's name, Darryl. That will come out at the trial."

The first cop, looking guilty like he felt he had to say something, piped up, "Her father filed the charges."

"Her father? So, Sandy's father."

Sandy's father was a bastard. I'm sorry to say it like that, but the man was straight-up mean. He'd never liked Soda. Hell, I'm not sure he ever liked Sandy.

Both cops looked at their feet.

"Sandy's not even around," I told them. "Soda got a letter from her. She's in Florida."

"Did you see this letter, Darryl?"

I nodded, and then it was my turn to look down. I'd seen the letter, but not the envelope, and leave it to Soda to not check the postmark.

"She wrote that she was in Florida," I said.

"Did she write that she was pregnant with his child?"

"With _someone's_ child. She said it wasn't his."

The second cop poked the warrant at me. When I didn't take it, he opened it up and paraphrased:

"Her father says it's his. He says Sandy's just turned sixteen. She may have been fifteen at the time of the incident. She didn't tell his old man about until after she turned up pregnant."

"Well, that sounds like a lot of bullshit to me," I said. I must have raised my voice. I became aware of noises in the house behind me. Soda and Pony usually sleep late on Sundays. I get up early to drink my coffee and read my paper in peace.

"Darry?" I heard Soda's voice calling from the back of the house. "Is someone here? Is everything all right?"

I yelled over my shoulder, "Soda, go back in your room."

"Darryl, we have a warrant. We can come in and get him." The second, more apologetic cop said.

The first one added, "You'd best tell him to come out here, son."

No worries there. Soda hadn't listened to me. I turned around and there he was- barefoot and bare chested- peering past me to look at the piece of paper that I wouldn't accept from the cop.

"Little man," I said, and then I stepped aside because they were already pushing past me.

Soda looked confused but didn't struggle. They cuffed him and read him his rights. They told him he was under arrest for first degree rape, a felony punishable by death or life in prison in the State of Oklahoma. He asked the same thing I had, with less proper grammar:

"Of who?"

"Do you still have that letter, Soda?" I asked him. "The one from Sandy?"

He nodded and furrowed up his brow.

"Yeah, Pony knows where, but…I didn't…we didn't even…she said…Darry?"

My name came out of his mouth as a whimper.

"Just go with them, Soda, and don't raise any Cain. And keep your trap shut. I'll get the letter. I'll take care of it."

They let him out the door. The first thing I intended to do, after I found that letter, was take care of Sandy's old man.

* * *

><p>an: Short and not-so-sweet. Inspired by a website where a self-proclaimed Tulsa greaser gives his own take on "canon" after the book.


	2. Chapter 2

SE Hinton owns The Outsiders.

**The Terms of My Surrender**

Chapter One-

As I remember, it was cold as shit as I high-tailed it across the neighborhood towards Sandy's old man's house. I hadn't bothered with my coat. I'm lucky I was dressed when the cops showed up. I probably would have gone after Sandy's dad in my t-shirt and boxers if that's all I'd had on.

I woke Pony up before I left, but didn't give him any details. I just asked where the letter was, and he told me. Soda had let him read it, and then squirrelled it away between the pages of a book that he'd never read.

I didn't remember much of the actual letter, just that I had breathed a sigh of relief when she wrote that the baby wasn't his. I didn't need that. At the time, I'd thought it couldn't get much worse than their two sixteen-year old asses getting knocked up and Soda thinking it was going to last forever.

That's the way Soda thought: everything was forever, good or bad. If he liked a girl, he thought he loved her. When Mom and Dad died, he thought he'd never get over it. I think he got over it a lot quicker than I did. I'm not sure I'm over it yet. There's never been time.

Sandy's father's house was five blocks away from ours- five blocks south, but in no nicer a neighborhood. If anything, the house where Sandy grew up was in worse shape. It was smaller and- in the first months of winter- the grass and the flower beds were dried and dead. I don't know if I was stomping that loud or crunching on the week-old snow or if the cops tipped him off, but Old Man Carson met me on the porch.

"What the hell did you do?" I said to him before I'd made it across the lawn.

"What are you doing here, Junior? Just take it easy. It ain't going to do no good to have both of your in jail."

"I ain't going to jail for asking you a question, am I? Or do you plan to lie about that too?"

"Sandy said…"

"Sandy ain't even here. You sent her away…God…two months ago now."

"And she finally got the nerve up to telling me the truth."

Carson kept the screen door open with a single finger. He opened the door enough for me to see a shotgun leaned against the frame.

"He didn't rape her. He wouldn't…You know Soda…even you have to know that."

"He made her all kinds of promises. She said that. You and I weren't there, Junior, but I believe my daughter. He promised her the moon and the stars and then he left her high and dry when she got knocked up."

"She left! He was frantic. She left and then dumped him in a letter."

Mr. Carson didn't answer. He looked up, and I heard the sound of gravel under car tires on the street behind us. There was a soft whine of worn brake shoes.

"Did you bring company, Junior?" Mr. Carson asked. "I had hoped we could keep this a private matter."

I turned around. Two-Bit's car had come to a halt in front of the house. He put it in park. It slipped back out of gear, and he jammed it in again before getting out. He left it running and the door open.

"Pony called me, Darry," he said. "Why don't y'all just come on back with me? You know we're going to have to sit on Stevie to keep him from setting the city on fire. Come on, man. Leave this old son of …"

Two-Bit choked on the last word and his eyes widened. That was just before Mr. Carson hit me with the butt of the shotgun.

* * *

><p>Two-Bit was right: we did damn-near have to sit on Steve. He showed up at the house and burst through the door calling Sandy everything under the sun and plotting a Butch and Sundance-style escape for Sodapop.<p>

"Steve," I said. "I got a hell of a headache. Simmer down."

"Shit. Shit!" Was all he had to say to that. He stormed past me into the kitchen, and then turned right around again and came back to the front room where I was sitting, holding ice to my chin.

"So, what are we doing the, fearless leader? Sitting on our asses watching the grass grow?"

"There's no grass," Two-Bit said.

"Shut up, Mathews. Darryl, have you even been to see him yet? Have you called a lawyer?"

I snapped then: "What damned lawyer? With what money? Yes, I have called. As soon as I regained consciousness and got back here, I called the goddamned courthouse and sought the advice of the best public defender no money can buy."

"A public defender? Darry, this is serious shit. He needs a serious lawyer."

"He was a very serious public defender. I promise you."

Steve snorted. He made his journey to the kitchen and back again. This time, he sat down on the couch next to Two-Bit and glared at me.

"Well? What did your public defender say?"

"He says that the rape charge won't stand. Soda's too young. He can't be charged with first degree rape if he's under eighteen and she's over fourteen. So, there's that."

"So he's not going to the electric chair." I swear that's the first thing I remember hearing out of Pony all morning long. He was standing by the fire place, leaning like he was trying to wedge himself between the mantle and the wall.

"No, kid," I told him. "Absolutely he's not. They'll drop it to something called seduction with the promise of marriage."

"Which means what?" Steve asked.

"Maximum sentence is five years."

Two-Bit cursed under his breath. Steve kicked the coffee table and it slid out into the middle of the room. I gave him a look then. He didn't get up and put the coffee table back, but he quit fidgeting around and listened.

"Do any of you know where Sandy actually is?" I asked them.

They all shook their heads.

"Steve, what about Evie?"

"Shit…" Steve said and looked away.

"Evie gave him his walking papers," Two-Bit said. "A couple of weeks ago."

"She said all I did was drink and mope around with Soda over Dal and Johnny. Said I wasn't any fun anymore."

"Like you ever were," Two-Bit said, and Steve punched him in the thigh.

I asked him, "Do you think you're even remotely on speaking terms with her? Could you ask her if Sandy really went to Florida? I would think they'd have to produce her for a trial. Someone must have contact with her."

"I'll try it with Evie," Steve said.

"Thank you," I told him. "I'm going to head down to the jail for visiting hours. I want y'all to sit this one out, okay? On Tuesday, you can all go see him. Just let me talk to him and the lawyer for now."

"Darry?" Pony said, but I just shook my head at him. I wasn't going to drag him any further into than I could, at least not until I had some idea what was going on.

* * *

><p>Seduction with the promise of marriage, the public defender explained, was a favorite charge to heap upon unwed teenaged offenders. It didn't carry the weight or the time of a rape charge, but it still preserved the girl's virtue. The assumption was that she was "chaste" before the time of offense. "Chaste" was the word he used. I must've snorted at him when he said it.<p>

"Do you have reason to believe she was promiscuous?" He asked me.

"Hell, I don't know. What does it matter? You can't prove it, can you? If she'd done it once, she may as well have done it a million times. Not like I'm going to go asking around looking for forty other guys to take the stand and say they've slept with her."

"It's been done before."

I cringed at him.

"Not by me. Soda would never let me." I sighed then and looked across the room at the diploma on the wall behind the public defender. It wasn't even a diploma. It was a certificate of some kind saying he was on loan from a law school in Oklahoma City.

"So, five years?" I asked him.

"Yes," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Can I see him?"

"I'll call the jailer."

He made the call, and I thanked him and went downstairs to booking.

* * *

><p>Soda sat at a small table in an interview room, leaning back on two legs of his chair and trying to toss up a pencil to stick it in the ceiling tile.<p>

That's when I lost it. He was just too cool, too calm, too much of a goddamned goof sitting there like he was in detention at Will Rodgers.

"Goddamnit, little man." I reached for his knee and knocked his chair down on to all fours. "What did you tell her? What did you promise her? Did you say you'd marry her?"

He gave me a meek look.

"Yeah, but she was already pregnant. It wasn't mine. We knew it wasn't mine. No one hurt her. She stepped out on me, but I forgave her and took her back, and then she found out…"

"Just when I think you can't get any more stupid. You told her that you'd marry her. You said those words?"

Soda nodded. No matter how many times he heard- and he'd heard it a bunch- it always wounded him to the core to be told he was dumb. I couldn't make myself back off from it, though.

"Soda, did you talk to the lawyer? You're going to go away for five years for this. Do you know where she is? I got to talk to her and make her hear some sense."

He shook his head.

"She told me she went to Florida to her grandparents. Only she doesn't have any grandparents in Florida. Her dad's parents are dead, and her mom's are in Stillwater. I figured it was just a saying…like code…you know, for one of those homes."

"You're probably right."

"Yeah, I ain't that stupid, am I?"

I let my head rest in my hands and rubbed my temples. After a moment, he asked:

"Where'd you get that shiner?"

"Trying to talk to Sandy's dad."

Soda laughed. "So now he likes you about as much as he likes me, huh?"

"That man is hell on wheels. Lawyer says he's doing this so's he can get your prison wages to support the baby."

Soda was silent. It was the first time I'd said the word "prison" to him. I guess it was just then beginning to sink in.

"So, I'm seventeen now. I'll be twenty-two when I get out," he said. "It'll be nineteen seventy-one, assuming I ain't sentenced until after New Years."

"Don't talk like that, little man. We got you a lawyer. It doesn't have to go like that."

As it turned out, though- for once- Soda was exactly right.


End file.
